LectureThe Architect as Shopper: Women, electricity, building products and the interwar ‘proprietary turn’ in the UK

In the UK in the 1930s, the vast expansion of the manufacture and the marketing of building products transformed the role of architects and their relationship to industry. At the same time, women were recruited into technical professions in order to build a new market of female consumers. Through a series of ‘portraits’ of some of these women – celebrated and unknown – and their work in institutions such as ‘The Building Centre’ in New Bond Street and the Electrical Association for Women, this paper examines how these changes were enacted and the ‘feminizing’ of technical information they brought about.